‘My dear Princess, you should not say such things. There are many who are fond of you.’
She turned to them and gave them each one of her rough embraces.
‘You two, of course,’ she said. ‘But you are rather f … foolish to think so highly of me. I’m not a very pleasant character sometimes, I fear. Although I am not bad at others. I have my moments. Oh dear, and I have to attend my grandmother’s Drawing Room. I think I shall go for a walk instead and then when it is time I shall not be found and Grandmamma will say what an ill-mannered creature I am – just like my mother, and she will think up some new and exquisite torture for me.’
‘You know Her Majesty would never dream of torturing you.’
‘But sometimes I think she would like to. She watches me with that big mouth of hers shut so tightly …’ Charlotte had transformed herself into the Queen; she seemed to grow small and malevolent.
‘Oh, do give over, dear Princess Charlotte, do,’ said Mrs Gagarin.
‘I shall go for a walk first and then I shall come back and be prepared in good time to present myself to the Begum and the Old Girls.’
She grinned with delight to see the shocked horror these names always aroused when she used them. Perhaps that was why she did. It was a sort of revenge.
She snatched up her cloak and ran out. She heard Louisa calling her but she paid no heed. She was not supposed to walk out unaccompanied. What nonsense! Anyone would think she was as fragile as Minney Seymour. ‘And I’m not …’ she said. ‘Nor as precious.’
She was saddened for a while. He was kinder now, so Mrs Fitzherbert had spoken to him. She sensed that he was trying to make an effort, but there was always a barrier between them. It was her mother, of course. And what was happening about her mother? What was the Delicate Investigation going to reveal?
She knew now more than they thought. They were trying to prove her mother immoral; they were trying to show that that frightful infant Willie Austin was her mother’s own baby and that her mother had performed an act of treason, for if Willie were indeed her mother’s child and her mother insisted that the Prince was his father …
Impossible, for then she, Princess Charlotte, would not long be an heiress to the throne. At least she would have to take a step backwards.
Willie Austin – that horrid, vulgar little brat! She had always hated him – in common with everyone else except her mother. Perhaps she had been a little jealous to see her mother petting him, kissing him, making the great fuss of him she always did.
Indeed she had a very strange family.
The castle loomed before her. Why did she hate living at Windsor when it was such a wonderful place? So much had happened here in the past – the home of her ancestors.
When I am queen, she thought, there shall be feasting here. It will be quite different then. I shall give balls and there will be fun and laughter. It will not be the grim old place Grandpapa and the Begum have made it.
The terraces had been built by Queen Elizabeth and the gallery was called Queen Elizabeth’s Gallery. My favourite part of the castle, thought Charlotte. I suppose because she made it.
It was not surprising that she thought so often of Elizabeth. There was so much here to remind her and at Hampton, Greenwich and Richmond. How thrilling to have been so often in fear of her life when she was young – and what triumph for her when at last she was proclaimed Queen of England. And those men who danced attendance on her and whom she would not accept as her lovers!
Charlotte laughed aloud. I will be like her, I think, if I am ever queen.
If! Why should she say that? She would be queen one day for her father and mother would never have a son – and no one could ever believe that that horrible child her mother doted on at Montague House could possibly have been sired by the Prince of Wales. So why should she say If? Because she had made a will recently? Because there was something eerie about the castle and the great forest? Because strange things happened to members of her family?
‘I shall be queen,’ she said aloud. And then looked about her almost defiantly. It was rather a wicked thing to have said because not only Grandpapa but her father would have to die first.
No one had heard. There was no one near. She looked towards the forest and thought of Herne the Hunter. He would not be abroad by day – if he ever was. She did not believe in such legends … not by day at any rate.
There was no Herne the Hunter; no one had ever seen him. But she did know that people were afraid to be alone in the forest by night lest they should come face to face with the ghost of Herne with the stag horns on his head. It was death to see him. She shivered. What dreadful things had Herne the Hunter done which had made him hang himself on an oak tree and haunt the forest for evermore?
There was so much romance at Windsor and yet living here was so dull … made so since she was not allowed to see her mother, because she was under the constant supervision of the Queen.
And now if she did not go in and allow them to prepare her for the Drawing Room she would be late and in disgrace – and not only herself but her attendants.
She grimaced. Who would be a princess? And yet … how angry she had been at the thought of that horrid little Willie Austin robbing her of her inheritance!
No, she would be a queen … as shrewd and clever … and perhaps as wicked as Elizabeth.
I wished they’d named me after her instead of after the old Begum, she thought.
The King was seated at his table turning over some State papers. He could not keep his mind on them; he could not keep his mind on anything. And it is getting worse, he admitted. What’s happening to me, eh, what? Perhaps I ought to abdicate. Give it over to George, eh?
He frowned; his face was scarlet and that made his white brows look whiter; they jutted out ferociously above his protuberant eyes. He was not in the least fierce; he was the mildest of men; he only wanted to live in peace – but events would not let him; and there was his family to plague him.
His sight was failing him; he could not read the papers without holding them closer to his eyes and then his mind would not concentrate on what was written there.
A poor fellow, he thought. And there’s no respect for me … not with my ministers, my people nor my family.
Yet there were some members of his family … his daughters for instance. Amelia most of all. Blessed Amelia, the delight of his life, who gave him so much pleasure and so much anxiety. Yet as long as he had Amelia he could find life worth living. The others too he was fond of … Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia. Charlotte, his eldest, was living happily with her husband, which was more than he had hoped for, in Wurtemberg with her Prince, once the husband of Caroline’s sister Charlotte who had died mysteriously … at least they hoped she was dead, poor girl, for if she were not then that other Charlotte, Princess Royal of England and his eldest daughter, was not married at all. But the first Charlotte had disappeared mysteriously in Russia. She must have been rather like Caroline … the sort of eccentric young woman to whom dramatic things happen.
Caroline was another source of anxiety. All this scandal. Those men she entertained at Montague House and behaved so wantonly with by all accounts. The terrible scandals that happened in this family! His sons seemed to have no moral standards at all. And he had always been such a virtuous man.